Broken Hallelujah
by Laryna6
Summary: RMX5 Maverick ending Christmas Carolesque AU. Eurasia has fallen to earth and Zero has fallen to the virus only to be woken up by a mysterious figure. Can old ghosts be laid to rest in time for X and the world to be saved? By what definition of saved?
1. You Will Be Haunted

This was outlined in the Notebooks a long time ago, but not written out, so I don't know if it counts as a Notebook Fic. Ties into/plays off of the 'Zero goes maverick' ending of X5, and has a couple alternate endings of its own, one being the game's outcome, in which Zero snaps out of it, then dies, and X doesn't remember Zero ever existed and won't remember anything he's told about him/won't accept data downloads either. Well, after X reappears post-rebuilding.

That could either be X repressing those memories because he can't live with them, knowing what he's missing without Zero (which is equally squee-inducing as carting around his beam saber so Zero will be watching over him/can get it when he comes back like in another ending), or something Zero did. X5's endings are even trickier to interpret since in the Inafune version you go straight from ALL THREE of them to Zero series (as X4's endings are equally valid) and in the X6+ version only one (not this one) is what actually happened.

In any case,

Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman and all other intellectual property referenced here. Capcom, Lucas, and the other rightful owners do. No infringement intended, no money made, please don't sue.

-

"Wake up."

Zero didn't know who the speaker was, but he knew that he didn't want to. No, that he couldn't bear to, and that was frightening enough to give him a clue as to why.

"Do you want X to die?"

_That_ was enough to force Zero awake, only to find that he couldn't gain any control over his systems. He could think, but his body was doing something and he had no idea what it was. Was this what it was like for those taken by the virus?

That was it. He'd lost to the virus, lost hope and…

"You're fighting X now, just so you know." And Zero could see, if only for an instant, that voice having far more control over his own systems than he did at the moment. "You can lie there and watch him die or you can fight." The vision of X dodging, his ex-trainee and partner so very conflicted, worried for him vanished.

"What can I do?" He hadn't been able to prevent the colony's fall, to do anything. This was all his fault.

"Nothing, with that attitude. Let me break things down for you." And Zero found himself in a virtual environment running on his own processor. A lab: he hated labs. "If things remain as they are, X will die. His odds of beating you and Sigma, one right after the other? Well, he's pulled off miracles before. But we both know why you didn't turn yourself in after the fourth war. With only one immune reploid the Hunters will have their capability cut to a third, and with you, who can create custom viruses, on the mavericks' side? Not to mention the atmospheric virus, the… the next war will be the last one if you don't wake up."

Zero couldn't argue, but, "Who are you?"

"Consider me a guide. Do you want to get control of your systems back or not?"

"You're wearing a black cloak and have a single eye under it. That's not exactly a look that inspires confidence." More like one that screamed 'bad guy.'

"We can't all be prettybots." He shrugged. "And you didn't answer the question. Are you going to just lay down and die, waiting for X to join you, because you lost one war? Your older brothers are all spinning in their graves like Topman."

Zero looked to the side. "Yeah, my family always lost in the end." The bad guys always lost, and Zero had tried to be a hero but, "I'm a Wilybot. X is the hero. I should just stay out of his way."

"And Protoman should have stayed out of Megaman's way. Let me rephrase the question. Do you want X to die?"And that tone demanded an answer.

"No." Never.

"No matter how much of a defect you think you are, you have to admit that his odds of survival are better if you try to take your body back. Even if you're almost certain to fail that's a lot better than _certain_ death. So don't throw yourself on the scrap pile just yet."

"I can't get my body back."

"Not like that, no. You wore yourself out in this war, not to mention letting yourself absorb virus since you needed the power increase, and one moment of despair weakened your self-control, or rather your determination to stay in control, enough it could shut you in here. You can't seriously fight it without more confidence or more power, although reminding you what you're fighting for," X appeared, a hologram between them, almost in the same pose, "helped."

"Why isn't he moving?"

"He_ is_ moving. You're an android master: Cain's OS might have limited you to the speed at which a human thinks, which normal reploids are limited to by the amount of ram, but your real self thinks in machine time. He hasn't slowed down, you've sped up, which is good because otherwise he'd be dead before you even got to work, at this rate."

X. "What do I need to do?"

"Well, finally. _You_ can't regain control over your systems. You need to be able to access the systems Dr. Cain locked away, mostly by accident since he didn't know what they were, to have a fighting chance. Since they're locked away your original self, who Wily named Omega, can't use them either, which is part of why he hasn't won by now. He's not at all familiar with the fighting style he's currently limited to."

"So how do I unlock them?"

"_You_ don't. There are a few key systems: virus control, weapon system control, defense control and mental control. There are people hanging around in your systems that you need to convince to unlock them for you. The downside is, if they do that they'll die, and for real this time."

"I have more split personalities?"

"No, call them ghosts. In the old days, robot masters didn't die when they blew up. Not if there was a backup station like this one." The shadowy figure that was starting to resemble death pointed to part of the scenery. "You know how Sigma doesn't stay dead. You have the ability to offer a safe haven for people you care about and were within range of when they died. You've done that for three people. However, it's not as simple for reploids since they have such bad designs. If they go against those systems' locks they'll use up all their energy, and since they only exist as electricity at the moment…"

"Iris."

"Who do you love more, a ghost or X? The past or the world's future?"

Hadn't he proven that by killing her? "Are you one of the three?"

"No."

"So you've come to tell me I'll be visited by three spirits and need to redeem myself if I don't want to be damned. Your name wouldn't happen to be Carol, would it?" He knew the virus' personality would finish him off eventually if he did nothing.

"It is nowhere near December and if you call me that I just might leave you to your own devices."

"Maybe Jacob Marley." Zero looked at him piercingly. "So you_ are_ a robot master, aren't you?" They'd often had musical names.

"To be more precise, I _was_ a robot master. I'm one of the people you killed, just like Iris and the other two."

"Wilybot?"

Not-Carol gestured to himself. "Isn't it obvious?"

Yeah, there was no way Light would build something that practically screamed evil. "So I really did kill everyone." Including his own family, own side.

"Yes."

He closed his eyes for a long moment. "No." Zero stood up, finally, from where he'd fallen. "Omega did."

"If you say so." The cloaked figure was surprisingly short when he stood up.

"Take me to Iris."

"I doubt it will come up again, but given the second law it is incredibly rude to give orders to robot masters. You're not a human and Wilybots that were built by Wily himself never had the laws, but everyone else had to get around it constantly and it was a very annoying pain in the processor. 'Go jump in a lake' is the classic example. Not to mention that you're going to be asking people you've murdered for favors."

"I'm sorry." Zero was.

"Apology accepted." Now rephrase that.

"Why are you helping me?" For all he knew this was something to do with the virus.

"X has those holograms of Dr. Light: you have me."

"I killed you and Dr. Wily forced you to look after me?"

'Jacob,' as Zero had decided to call him, laughed. "The things we do for family. Now, don't you have something to do?"

There was no choice, was there. "Please take me to Iris?"

"Of course."


	2. You Have Yet A Chance

The park deck… She'd loved this place. At least it wasn't where he'd killed her. "Iris." Had there been this many flowers here?

"Zero." She smiled at him, and it broke his heart.

"I'm so sorry." He wanted to grab her, squeeze her, keep her safe, go down on one knee and beg for her forgiveness, but he was going to have to ask her to die again.

"I forgave you a long time ago. I've been doing what I can to help cheer you up."

"Iris…" He didn't deserve that.

"I love you, Zero, but I'm not a hero. Colonel and I, Dr. Cain couldn't make us as strong as X was. We couldn't bear both loving everyone and having to fight them, so we split apart. I died because I was weak, and didn't want to protect humans even though they were afraid of us. Of course you were disappointed in me." Rejected her as she'd died in his arms. "I tried to be perfect for you, but… So I've just done what I can, believed in you. You're a real hero, and you can't give up the way I did. You're so much better than that. So I did my best to make you feel better."

"Those dreams…"

She smiled. "And I talked to you when you needed a boost, even if you didn't quite hear me. I'm so proud of you. I'm honored that you thought I was worth loving." Mistook her for someone worthy of him. "But I'm really just a crutch." A substitute. "Can I unlock your defenses for you? I want to protect you."

"Iris…"

"Please?"

"Ask her." Zero was the only one to hear that voice. "You can at least say thank you, and let her know that you appreciate this." But Zero didn't want to ask her, that would feel like killing her all over again and he couldn't bear that. "You're going to be killing her. Don't sugar coat it so you feel better. She deserves better."

"Iris, I'm sorry. I wish I'd heard you before, but if I don't hurry…"

"I didn't want you to know I was really here, none of us did. I would have been too embarrassed." And Zero would have felt guilty. "If you don't hurry X will die and the humans will be wiped out." Iris had once been willing to leave humanity behind to be wiped out at the mavericks' leisure.

"I don't want to ask you to do this, but I need you to. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Zero." She walked toward him, arms outstretched, and when he embraced her he felt her fade away, his armor instead of her arms encircling him. What had he been wearing before?

"Iris…"

"Think of her when you wear it, when the 'upgrades' she just unlocked for you save your life. To give you good memories instead of bad, that was what she wanted."

"She's, she was a lot like X, wasn't she?" Zero's smile wasn't quite right, wanting to be fond of her but knowing that he'd been using her and now…

"It's hard to be held to a hero's standards. The other side of the coin next?"

"Colonel?"

_This_ time he appeared where the final battle had taken place.

"A word of advice: You made Iris feel terrible. She made you sad and you clearly didn't really want to accept her final gift to you. That weakened her power, and you're weaker than you would have been if you'd been a little less self-hating and a little more considerate. I suppose there are some people who can only really express their true feelings through fighting." Jacob's voice became hard instead of showing a pretense of amusement at how badly Zero had screwed up. "So fight."

Then Colonel showed up, or he saw Colonel.

It didn't take long to figure out that this place didn't exactly conform to the normal rules. Damage remained on him, not Colonel. It was probably due to mental state, or something vision-questy like that. What he felt he deserved, and Colonel's words, especially about Iris, cut him to the bone.

Iris was Colonel's twin sister, and he hadn't been able to keep Zero from killing her twice. Iris was someone he had wanted to protect, they both had, in the same way as X.

X, who was fighting his best friend (how foolish, to see Zero as that, the history X knew of or not) all alone out there. "Is this what you wanted?!" Colonel demanded, outraged. For the virus to win, for all of them to die or be taken? "Perhaps that's why you didn't let us escape!"

_That_ struck home. How much of him was him and what the virus? How many of his actions, or what percentage of them, were controlled by it? His position, trusted by the hunters, trusted by X? He knew how to calculate how much damage various people could do if they went maverick. Had his entire life been nothing but preparing for when the virus would reclaim him?

"And you actually think I'll help you become more powerful?"

Omega didn't have access to these systems, according to the Wilybot Jacob, and if Zero unlocked them for him, then if Zero lost, as he had before… He couldn't move in time to dodge or block that hit and it sent him to the ground. "You're not the Commander Zero I knew," Colonel told him, beam saber held to his chest.

"I don't know who I am," Zero admitted, closing his eyes. "Or I do, and that's the problem." The source of the virus. Dr. Wily's creation.

"Do you honestly think you can win against the virus like this?"

"I… I have to." The virus had to be stopped, it had to be, or X…

"Really?" Colonel's disdain was merited. If this was something Zero was determined to do then why wasn't he acting like it.

"Iris, you…" Their deaths, on his conscience again?

That merited a kick, not even a real attack. "My sister died to give you that protection and you aren't even using it."

That was true, Zero realized. He should have been but he hadn't wanted to profit from her death. "I'm sorry, Iris." His hand rose to his chest. Regardless of whether or not he deserved her sacrifice, she deserved for it to be valued, for it to have been worth it.

His armor's ability to restore his energy probably wasn't this dramatic in the real world. He rolled out of the way of Colonel's swipe, sprang to his feet and lunged at him, locking blades. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you again." Iris' death wouldn't be in vain, and X's death would not happen.

Period.

Soon enough Colonel was in the position Zero had been. "Unlock," what were the remaining options? "My weapons."

"Or what?" This was not the sort of person to surrender. Repliforce's foolish pride had cost them dearly.

Colonel was already dead, after all. "Or I go up against Omega without them, and if I die because you refused then _you're_ the one who would have dishonored your sister's sacrifice."

"I can't fight that thing," Colonel admitted, although it galled him. "Repliforce couldn't, no reploid could. It was always you, and X, the ancients, the heroes."

"Don't call me a hero." Every time Zero heard that word applied to him, knowing what he knew, the wound grew deeper.

"Then what are you?"

As though Zero knew. "Regardless of…" Everything, "I won't lose against it." That was what counted, he would make that be what mattered about him! Just as he had when he'd decided to join the hunters to redeem himself for those he'd killed as an 'irregular,' just as he had when he'd chosen to ignore the dreams, just as he had when he'd kept fighting after being forced to admit the truth! "I am Commander Zero, and I will never let the virus win."

"Do you know how to destroy it?" Was there hope for a cure, for an end to the wars that had claimed so many lives, his among them?

"I have no idea. But I will keep fighting until _someone_ does."

Colonel wasn't convinced quite yet. "You lost to it once."

Zero snorted. "And you would rather run away than fight it even once. I've been fighting it all my life and I didn't lose to it, I lost to my doubts. You're right, I might just be its pawn. But if I don't fight it, here and now, then who will, who can? No matter how small the chance I might win, it's better than a zero percent chance, and X has pulled off miracles before." He realized that his words were echoing Jacob's. "I won't lose."

"For _him_, you won't lose. You weren't any more sympathetic to humanity than we were. This world is even more wrecked than before the fourth war began, they still mistrust our kind even though we face a worse fate than death for them, and you still chose a practically hopeless war over Elysium. You chose X over my sister."

Zero couldn't really argue with any of that. "You're right, except can you really build Elysium from cowardice? From weakness?"

That galled Colonel. He and Iris had been meant to be a single reploid, the 'ultimate peacemaker,' one that could both love the innocents taken by the virus and kill them to save them. One that could both acknowledge the flaws of all living things and see their true value.

They hadn't been able to handle it, despite Dr. Cain's best efforts. No one but X could, really, not without going mad. Kill people that you loved? Day after day after day? So they had become two, Colonel inheriting that sternness and Iris that kindness. Except that Iris hadn't been able to love them enough to kill them (and most of those that could become mavericks, like X, would rather die), and Colonel hadn't been able to fight them well enough to come to understand them for the same reason.

"You're right, I…" Zero shook his head. "I'm no better than you. Part of why I've fought since the beginning is that I hated myself for killing all those hunters. I look at people and see their flaws first, because all I care about in myself is my own. I'm not worth fighting for, my life isn't. I've known I was a monster since long before I found out the virus even existed. The world is… there's barely anything left to save, you're right, both the humans and our own kind are…" Racist, irresponsible, aiding and abetting the virus with a thousand petty cruelties. "Not all that worth helping." Any more than he was. "But X wants to save this world. He believes in it, he believed in you, and he's out there right now believing in me, probably hoping I'll snap out of it and not fighting as seriously as he needs to because of it."

And that was it, really. What it came down to. "He's the hero, not me. I don't remember, but odds are I killed his family." Just like you and Iris. "And he was my trainee, before you were built, when everything went crazy around us and General Sigma launched those missiles… Dr. Cain was in a shielded building, a lot of people weren't, but we were right there and we couldn't stop him. You were nearly never built…"

Zero knew he shouldn't let himself flashback, he needed to focus on the now, but this was stirring up memories. "And then I had to blow myself up because he would have been killed otherwise, and then the next thing I know I'm alive again because of him and I have to go save his ass again. You two wanted to abandon this world and find a place that didn't suck, build one if you had to, someplace that was actually worth fighting for. Sometimes I think you had the right idea, but X won't abandon this world and he's worth fighting for. In fact, X being too nice to ditch all of us is probably part of why he's worth fighting for, as much as I don't like him being in danger. That's it, really."

"Why is he so special?!" The question that had frustrated the attempt to mimic his greatness. "Is it that he's an android, the original? Could I never have, could we never have…" Could I never have been a hero, could Iris never have been what you needed?

"I wish I knew," Zero told him sadly. "But X is X. So hurry up and decide." The beam saber started to cut into his neck just a fraction, dangerously close to some rather key wires and boards. "According to the sith lord I can't win this without those systems. So if you want to save the world? Now's your chance."


	3. I Am Not The Man I Was

This time he didn't have his eyes closed, so he saw the burst of light. So he now had his buster (he'd picked up the beam saber from Sigma, Wily hadn't designed him to use it) and it turned out his hair wasn't just ornamental. That was pretty cool, actually.

"That went better, but if you keep tossing your head like certain shampoo commercials that didn't survive the cataclysm I'll be forced to call you girlybot."

Zero didn't dignify that with a response. "Two down. Take me to the last one, Darth Considerate."

"Inconsiderate? I go to all this trouble to enable you to save X, and the world, and that's the sith name you saddle me with?" Invader, insidious… The pattern had been broken with Darth Maul, but Sigma had used a 'beam' saber and Vile, who looked like a certain family of bounty hunters, had been a hunter before he went maverick. You couldn't really have been an irregular hunter without getting to know your Star Wars trivia.

"You'll be Darth Ept if you don't hurry up and he dies."

"I suppose that depends on who you would ask. Dr. Wily, for one, would call you the inept one for not having killed him by now. I took you to Iris first because otherwise Colonel would have taken you apart before you got your head on straight."

Colonel wouldn't have wanted to dishonor his sister's sacrifice and it was true that without the armor Zero would have survived only a few hits. He would have to do better than that.

The first lab had been, while not exactly military, very lab-like. Not a hunter lab or any one Zero recognized, but clearly someplace meant for science and _not_ a nice bedside manner. Zero hadn't paid attention to the scenery but it had seemed more generic lab-like, only with ancient tech, than something he would have associated Dr. Wily with.

This one, though, was practically the opposite of all things Wily or impersonal. Zero had been here before. Zero had practically been born here, in the sense of himself as Zero instead of the crazy irregular or the maverick.

There were curtains, and not cut flowers, that would have been wasting an incredible amount of money, but very pretty fake ones in vases on the bedside tables and in random places. This was the lab Dr. Cain and X had shared before the violence had escalated and they had first moved to a lab at the irregular hunters' headquarters and then X had joined the hunters. There had been a secure ward and so on, he wasn't the first insane irregular they had treated and they weren't stupid, but this was the general work, eating, and living area. Socialization was apparently good for recovering patients and traumatized children.

Zero certainly hadn't killed anyone here, even if he hadn't stayed long, and he had no idea who he'd killed that would see this as such an important place. "Not…"

"Don't worry, you trained him better than that." When Zero turned around he was a bit surprised to find a rookie. No, not a rookie, but a basic, standard model, utterly dated, old-school, and pretty close to X's design. No frills, no animal motifs, just green and gray body armor. Well, that did put him at about the era this lab would have been in operation: they hadn't made them like that in decades. Nowadays reploids were purpose-built from the beginning instead of given generalist builds so that they could decide what they wanted to be customized into.

The 'general' models were unspecific about everything, including age and gender. So the person who had just spoken with a tone of voice that was 'been here, done that,' intelligent, and reassuring enough to register on ex-trainer Zero's radar as someone who was an experienced commander, of a workgroup if nothing else, and should be fast-tracked to officer training, sounded young and girly enough to be X.

Zero realized that he'd actually calmed down and was taking this guy's word for it, which was odd. "Do I know you?" Well, he'd killed the guy, so not recognizing him was pretty insulting, wasn't it.

At least it made him laugh, a rather paternal laugh in a boy's voice, instead of scowl. "I'm not really surprised that you don't recognize me, now that I think about it. We met for about five minutes and it was after I got upgraded into a different body."

Instead of getting into a fighting stance as Zero had half-expected the non-rookie gestured for him to sit down. Zero found himself doing so on the seat across the table from him. He had no idea who this guy, or girl for that matter, since who knew what this genderless model had upgraded into even though Zero would guess a guy, was. Maybe a medic X had trained? Someone Zero had killed in the initial rampage? The Irregular Hunters had captured alive in the old days and when it came to Zero that had cost them.

"I'm the one that sealed away your access to the virus." Yes: this was certainly an Irregular Hunter, and this was a briefing. "Or rather, I _am_ the seal. I never got certified as a doctor, but I was built here, I grew up here, I learned at X and Cain's knees, and I've forgotten more than that Lifesaver knows about reploid design."

Zero would bet. "How did that happen?"

"I died during the rampage, I ended up haunting you, and you were brought back here. It became obvious that you were a Wilybot, and if the virus had been able to sabotage the replacement OS Dr. Cain installed then X would have been your first target when you devolved to insanity without warning." That hadn't been an option. "So I started playing scrambler. The more virus you were exposed to the more I had to link into the systems in question in order to sabotage them faster than the virus nanites repaired them. At this point I'm in control of them more than just being a tenant, I have personal nanites and am not just a ghost like the other two, but I can't control the virus the way you might be able to and if I disengage I die."

"So you were helping me… Stay me? All this time?"

A dismissive shrug: it seemed nothing special to this person. Well, if they were an irregular hunter that was what they had done while they were alive, helped the insane get their lives back, but for some reason… "Well, that and letting you access a few of my databanks. A few of the other non-mavericks that you grabbed one way or another tried to help you resist the virus, but they came in on the wrong bandwidth so there was only so much they could do before running out of power."

"Your databanks…" This person's name was really hovering on the edge of Zero's mind right now, but it just wasn't adding up. He had this urge to salute but on the other hand this person was so much like X. But then, X's first creation, the first reploid he and Dr. Cain had built, had become, "General Sigma?!"

That earned a slight smile. Bingo, it seemed. Then he returned to an officer's sternness. "You saw that data file of our first encounter. I came to detain you and rescue my men. During our fight, you started to become more and more rational, until finally you decided not to kill me. I had _thought_ something wasn't adding up, and then that crystal on your forehead started to glow. I thought it was a remote control device, attempted to disable it, and the next thing I know I'm having an out of body experience. At first I thought you'd somehow managed to download a sample of my memories and that 'I' was 'you,' but as my body carried you out of there to this lab it became very clear very quickly that they were not me. Failing to inform X of the key factor, that crystal, confirmed it. I wasn't able to get control of your body but I_ was_ able to keep that crystal from becoming fully operational. Eventually it became clear that you had no idea what was going on either, and that the crystal was attempting to regain control of you."

Sigma tapped papers spread out on the table between them. "I could use some of the channels it tried to use to influence you on some occasions, and you seem to have picked up a few of my traits, in addition to the beam saber style. I suppose I have to apologize for manipulating you. I took shameless advantage of your guilt to first get you into the hunters to investigate my replacement and then get you to accept the virus' scheme to place you as X's tutor. Only instead of being manipulated into sabotaging his training and learning his weak points…"

Zero had to nod. "You_ are _good. Were good." No grudges here, no sir.

"We were very, very lucky. A combination of factors including my body's status as the first infectee, the fact reploids are far inferior to the androids the virus was designed for, and the fact I was focused on that crystal when I died caused it to give me a maverick's clearance level and, well. I'll leave my notes here, you can read through them later." The papers were expertly put into a neat stack. Ah, paperwork. "The key issue is that I'm not immune. I've been keeping the virus out of the area that contains my personality but if you fall to the virus I will as well and given what my doppelganger has been responsible for I, like X, would rather die."

Only it wasn't as simple as that sounded. Zero folded his arms instead of playing straight man by just asking him to hand over control.

That won a slight smile. No, no rookies here, appearances aside. "Unlike you, I have some notion of the danger the capability to control the virus poses. Even the two upgraded versions 'S' managed to cobble together aren't anything but hack jobs. If a virus were created by these systems specifically geared to modern reploids with the ability to go stealth, X would wake up one morning and every single reploid on the planet would have become a maverick overnight, with no idea they were infected until suddenly it_ used_ the perfect control it had already attained. Tied by Omega into a real-time unblockable tactical net, carrying out his commands instantly… exactly." If Zero had been a human his face would have been gray.

"I have two options," Sigma went on. "I can give you back control or I can activate one of Wily's safety precautions. It won't destroy the virus itself but it will do better than just trigger your self-destruct: it will prevent Omega from coming back to life. On the one hand, that means no upgraded versions. On the other, while that would let X win one battle without your systems and codes there likely isn't a way to win the war. Dr. Wily was a genius. _Insane_, but a genius."

"But if you give me back control and I lose it again, we're doomed."

"No. Worse." Zero knew some of how worse. "What's your analysis of the situation, Commander Zero?"

Iris had been willing to help, it was just how much Zero was going to _let her_ and he'd botched that, as always. Colonel had been a contest of wills. He'd started caring again because of her and he'd regained his determination because of her twin.

Now he was going to have to think and he'd given up on thinking at the end of the fourth war, because thinking didn't do any good. He had to just keep going, but that wasn't going to cut it against the person who, it turned out, really _was_ the greatest strategist of their time. "I can't let X die, so Omega can't regain these capabilities." That was review, but then situational analysis was reviewing the situation. "X was able to analyze his own systems to create you, so if he had mine to analyze, well. Dr. Wily would have done stuff to prevent that, so I would have an uphill fight to let him. But that's the only real hope of stopping the wars." Zero knew it.

"However, is that chance of total victory great enough to take the risk of a near-instant defeat? At least option two would give X, and the Maverick Hunters, time to potentially find another way." Maverick, not Irregular. This wasn't Sigma's world, not anymore, and from the age in those designed-to-look-young eyes he was getting weary of it.


	4. I will

Regardless of your feeling on the Megaman Xtreme spinoff games, I like these bits, quoted from the MegaMan Series Ending FAQ on gamefaqs by ReyVGM:

_"After the battle, Zero assisted in releasing the DNA Souls. Now the Reploids would return to normal. He has no doubt that X has finished his mission now. Zero and X have faced and fought through many difficulties together. As long as X is with him, Zero can do anything. Though he doesn't express it, Zero believes this with all his heart. This is something that will never change."_

Zero is, throughout the X series, shown to be majorly self-hating. And here we have the reason why he gets up in the morning and fights the good fight even though he knows better than anyone how futile it is and how ironic it is that he fights it...

Also, from the ending of Rockman Zero 4, on gamefaqs thanks to TheSinnerChrono (although I fixed a couple spelling mistakes):

_Weil: Bwahahaha! Are you even capable of it!? The Reploid hero... Protecting justice and humanity! I am one of those humans you were sworn to protect! Do you have it in you to defeat me!?_

Zero: I never cared about justice, and I don't recall ever calling myself a hero... I have always only fought for the people I believe in. I won't hesitate... If an enemy appears in front of me, I will destroy it!

The above doesn't seem too significant, until you think about the people Zero believed in. In X, you could consider the possible ones: his rescuer, General Sigma, who was lost to the virus and Zero did not join; Iris and Colonel, who Zero did not fight for either, in fact he fought against them when it came down to it; and X. At this point, X is dead, having used himself up and entrusted the world's safety to Zero. The world and X trying to save it is what caused X's death, in fact. There's also Ciel, at this point, but Zero 4 ends with Zero's death. He saves the world as X wished, fights for him one more time, and then he's done.

Zero fights _only_ for the people he believes in, and he will kill any enemy of theirs without hesitation. Very likely including himself, and depending on the details of his hibernation and the virus and so on he may in fact have needed to kill himself, after finishing Weil off, to prevent a new virus, making Ragnarok a matter of killing two birds with one meteorite, or whatever.

Regardless of one's feelings on pairing them, and you can't call it homosexuality because androids do not reproduce sexually and therefore do not have the type of gender required for the term to apply-if they did Iris and Colonel would have the same gender-Zero is living for X. After Zero self-destructs in X1 X is able to live on for his sake, but in the 'Zero's gone' ending of X5 his memories of Zero are repressed and he will _not accept _new ones, most likely since he can't bear knowing what he's lost, and it's after Zero is sealed away that X starts ceasing to care about the people he's fighting according to the Zero series. They started being not people he wanted to stop, to save, as Zero was saved, but obstacles, things, and that's the trap Copy X fell into, seeing them as things, not people. X sealed the Dark Elf away inside his own body not only because that was the best way but because without Zero to remind him what he was fighting for he was in danger of becoming one of the monsters he fought. Zero was able to endure the guilt of the virus and keep fighting for X. X was able to endure decades of warfare and still have hope and compassion for his enemies because of Zero.

There are different varieties of love, but eros or philios that's the kind of love a relationship based solely on sexual attraction at first sight could never hope to compare to. You can't really call it anything but true love, even if it's 'just' philios, or friendship.

-

It wasn't Zero that answered. "You're not exactly helping by encouraging his denial."

"Denial?" This was the first time Jacob had appeared to any of the three. Zero had thought he couldn't for some reason, or would stay out of it.

"Zero and Omega are one and the same. To kill Omega is to kill himself. You and 'S' are two separate individuals, he's the copy of your memories that you thought you were at first, Sigma, but Omega was immune from the beginning. The only difference between the two of them is how they try to bring about their ideals. It's a struggle for self-control, not control. Everything comes down to who he wants to be. Omega wants to be who he is: the master of the virus, the god of destruction, the one who will purify this world and create Elysium. If Zero doesn't want to be that person, the one with control, then he won't be. That was his years of denial. When he was forced to admit that he was he still refused to be the one in control and so he lost it."

Turning to Zero, he continued, "You can either accept the fact that you killed billions of people in the Cataclysm, get over it, and be Zero _and_ Omega or refuse to accept both responsibility for those deaths and the validity of the reasons why, throw Zero away, and be Omega alone."

"You!" Zero's beam saber was drawn at an instant and at his throat, or would have been if there was anything solid to press it against. "You were trying to get me these powers so that I would finish what Wily started all along, weren't you?"

"For a certain value of what Wily started, perhaps."

Jacob waved at Sigma for silence. "Shush, nephew."

"Nephew?!"

"Do you really want to know? The source of the difference between you and Omega is your memories. Your memories are the sources of your motivation, your strengths, your weaknesses, your power. That's what I'm locking away from both of you. Do you want to know why all of this is happening?"

"Is the cure for the virus in there?"

"Omega can cure it in an instant. But Omega alone."

"So if I lock Omega away the way I was locked away now and he was locked away all my life then I'll just have to trust in X to find a cure." Zero sheathed his saber. "I'm not falling for it. I'm trusting in X. He believes that I was never a monster, and I don't care what memories you're keeping from me because they _don't matter_. I am Commander Zero of the Maverick Hunters, X's teacher and protector." Even though X saw him as one he couldn't bring himself to claim the title of hero, of the world's protector. "I will never be a person that kills innocent people."

"Neither was Omega." Jacob's face couldn't be seen but his voice smirked for him. "For a certain value of innocent."

"I'll protect X. Neither of you is going to stop me." Zero hoped that door was actually a way out, or this would look a lot less dramatic. "Just watch me."

"I wouldn't open that if I were you. He's been trying to get in here and regain control of the virus since he woke up. When you open that door the fight will start."

"I'd prefer to be safely dead then," Sigma added.

"So give me control." Zero drew his saber. "Have some faith in your student."

"I don't think there's a real teacher that is ever able to watch their student go to war without worrying." And Sigma knew Zero wasn't that poor excuse for a teacher. "But if you're that determined to fight for my father's sake, then goodbye and good luck."

The flash this time was more similar to a real self-destruct, as the lab fell to pieces around them. Then the entire illusion did as Zero was thrust into his 'real' mind instead of the stages of Jacob's little play.

If he just killed X this would all be over. Sure, there would be deaths, but then it would be over, there would be Elysium, and he could kill himself when it was over. X would have wanted peace. Only, no, he hadn't, but X didn't want to become a maverick but they'd spent all these years trying to stop it and things had just gotten worse and worse and this world didn't deserve X's suffering. X was Dr. Light's creation, he was Dr. Wily's, this was damn inevitable like it or not, there really was no other way…

…hard to think there was such a thing as miracles in that whirling chaos of guilt, weariness, the certain knowledge that he could take X apart and delaying the inevitable was just making X, making all the good people suffer more…

There really was no 'Omega' or other personality to blame it on. Not just the virus. It was all him, so he wasn't a hero (but he knew that), he didn't deserve to be X's comrade, he should just stop fighting…

…if he stopped fighting the virus won and X lost…

If it weren't for Iris' help his systems would be overheating. He would have been restored from backup and by the time that happened he would have lay down and died.

Goddamn humans/goddamn virus forcing him to think about all this!

His internal self-defense systems could be targeted to purge the virus from his systems, thanks to Colonel. That made it a bit easier to think, but… He didn't want to hurt X but there was no way not to hurt X, even self-destructing would still doom him to fight a losing war and the idiot would probably hate himself for failing Zero.

-

_X5 'Bad Ending'_

-

He had to get away from here, have some time to think. Yes, that was it, just get through this fight, just be Zero for right now, and then he could save X from Sigma, then disappear until he had some idea what could be done about the virus. X would never stop searching for him, so he could… just make X forget about him, he could use the virus to do that, and then he wouldn't mourn someone who didn't deserve it.

That would work, and it would take a long time to get rid of the virus, and there might not be much left of the Zero personality either when Omega was gone. He didn't want to be Omega, or Zero, he'd wanted all along to be a new person, who could have a new start, in a peaceful world, with X.

He wasn't a hero, he couldn't save the world, so why did he think he could save it from the humans? Just… leave it to X. Yes, he could do that. X had already managed… so many miracles. Then, maybe, when it was over, and the virus had been destroyed and purged from his systems, or… He'd turn himself in if he had to, even if he didn't want X to know, ever, what Zero was, but…

To someday be able to see X again, in a world that wasn't his fault, never having to know about what he'd done…

He'd wanted to lie down, to give up, to rest, but that way the virus didn't win, he didn't die, everything would turn out for the best.

Yes.

He was back to normal, everything was back to normal and fine, they would go kill Sigma, no, he would so X would be safe, or…

X wasn't buying that he was fine.

Smart X.

-

_X5 'Bad Ending' AU_

_-_

Heh, even in the grip of the virus he still didn't want to hurt X. Wanted to infect him, and that was appealing because the virus would take away that guilt and then he wouldn't have to kill him and he could make everything better, fix the damn world if he controlled the virus.

Omega had wanted to fix the world. Even killed Wily, which Zero couldn't argue with either. They really were the same person, that made it hard to draw the line between good and evil. Or was there a good and evil? Well, there was a good.

Iris and Colonel, not to mention Wily had thought Elysium was a place without humans. That really wasn't it at all. Elysium was where someone cared about you. Was wherever X was, even in the middle of a war. He'd wanted to get to X's side even if he went nuts and killed him a second later, because he'd known that wouldn't happen.

Who was he to think he was a hero? Who was he to think he knew best? He was Omega and Omega had done some horrible things, some really, really stupid and evil things.

Oh, so that was what Jacob had been talking about. Those who won't learn from history…

Omega, Zero, had _fucked up_ _repeatedly and was an idiot._ Of course he couldn't figure this out all on his own, of course he couldn't do it on his own.

Luckily, he _wasn't_ all on his own.

It took a bit of doing to slow down enough to get into X's frame of reference. X had thought that entire agonized paralysis had been just waiting for an opening, it looked like. Only about a half-second from his perspective.

He didn't have to be afraid of the virus. The virus was his, was him, and he didn't have to be afraid of himself. Not right here, not right now. Doing more things helped him slow down, helped him calm down. Fix the minds of as many of the mavericks as could be fixed, restore those waiting to be brought back to life into the empty bodies, delete the parody of Sigma, X's eldest reploid son… He could do this. This was what he was built for.

X hesitantly lowered his weapon as Zero sheathed his saber. "Zero?" Please be Zero?

His opponent smiled, virus twining around him like an affectionate pet. "Don't worry, X. I am Zero Omega, and I shall bring about Elysium for you."


	5. Morning of Gifts

_This was in my documents folder for ages after I published the rest of the fic. I've decided to go ahead and publish it: I don't know how much it adds to the overall experience, but it was written and I use this account partially as an archive of my writing over time, as I hopefully improve. _

_Sap and technobabble/infodump ahoy. _

* * *

"…And that probably sounded crazy, didn't it." Had he sounded like that before? He didn't remember, but he would bet on it. The pattern was still there, the mind was the same, just like how removing the virus from the mavericks wasn't going to do anything, what it had done to their minds would remain. "Like changing the background," from white to black: what had stood out before was gone and things that hadn't been noticed before were all that was left? No, that wasn't a very good metaphor for what happened when the virus invaded.

Reploids got their 'baseline' nanites from X, although they were altered. They contained just… general patterns, ways to be, that served as a foundation, and then the virus replaced that with arrogance, the desire to kill, the belief that they deserved it… Replaced X with the worst of how he had been?

Not that he remembered, and he was horribly glad he didn't. "I need to replace the baseline," that would do it. He swept a hand towards X, reaching out with the virus as well to get a sample that he could copy to restore the original personality framework of the mavericks.

It didn't occur to him that this would obviously be read as attacking him with the virus until X jumped back. He winced. "Sorry, still haven't gotten my head on straight. That was stupid. A baseline. I need a sample of their original configuration to cure the mavericks… actually, since they used _edited _copies of yours I should copy a normal reploid instead." And, yes, there was one. It was almost automatic to bind them into the web, create a backup to keep them safe – he needed to do that for all of them, he didn't want any more to die – and sort of transfer the data, let them know what was happening and why.

"You're obviously higher quality, though, but that would mess them up. Not as bad as the virus did, but the same way. If they're used to working around certain things and taking others for granted in their own heads, then if that's totally changed around?" A cascade of data, having to adjust the sample he'd gotten for older mavericks, earlier configurations, trying to figure out how to build the pieces they were all missing. "I think I can fix them all, except the first generation, when you were customizing each batch. I don't have any idea what they were built with and it's been long enough a lot of them are used to the virus being there, so if I take those traits away that will unbalance them too."

Straightening out the web, untangling it, binding them all together was only logical, it made this go quicker and he could tell them not to kill, tell them it would be alright as they began to realize what it was they had been doing. "Please don't blame them, well, I know you won't, X. It's not their fault."

He found himself wanting to reach out to X again, wanting to pull him into the web, wanting to pull in every single reploid, and told himself sternly to stop that, it wasn't right to bind people against their will. That made him release some of the ones who were screaming for it…

And as he released even that loose control over their systems he could feel them descend into madness the way he almost had. And, an instant later, felt them die.

He staggered, and knew that he had to pull himself together. He wouldn't have shown a reaction like that if his self-control wasn't fraying at the seams.

It was good that the backups were working properly, but he hadn't wanted them to be tested like that.

Those he let himself pull back in, wrap them in calm and that it wasn't their fault. That was only a temporary solution, it wasn't right to mess with people's feelings. Something had to be done for them.

X would know what to do, he had been there for Zero, for everyone else, but Zero must _not _just reach out and take him, he had no right, yet he kept thinking that he did.

"Zero." X was trying to keep his voice level, trying _not _to let that be a question, even though Zero had given himself another name, had suddenly begun acting so differently.

"Yes, but I was someone else, once. I still don't remember being them, but I have to fix this." They _needed_ him, and it was so different from being a hunter. Before, he'd fought for the people he knew, the people he cared about, even though at first it had been for his own sake, to atone. And now he knew all of them, all the mavericks. They were tangled up in him, like, like family? Human family, where they were bound by blood and there was some instinctive connection no matter how much they might hate each other? "Dr. Light left those capsules for you, someone did something like that for me, although why did they wait so long to wake me up? So that I was strong enough," he realized. "I could barely figure out what to do even after being Zero for so long. This is confusing, not like the virus, the virus was one, one personality. A sick one, but just one, and now I'm dealing with _all of them_ and I can't pull out."

"You can't free them from the virus?"

"I can restore their personalities, mostly, but I freed some and they blew themselves up, they couldn't take what they'd done even though it wasn't them." Except no, it had been, just as he was Omega. A twisted them, a wrong them, but them. "I don't want anyone else to die, I promised you. I said there'd be a peaceful world now and no one else would have to die because of this, because of me. I nearly… after the rampage." So he could understand wanting to die. "Someone's going to have to talk them down before I can let go, and it's not like _I _know how to deal with guilt. There are probably a lot of people who wouldn't do anything drastic, but I'm having to sort through to find them and that's going to take awhile."

"Zero," X said again, and it was a conclusion. "Lifesaver wanted me to bring you back to base, he was getting worried."

"Worried I had gone maverick?" Zero had to laugh, although the sound was anything but happy. "I lost it there, X. I really did. I let it win. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"You weren't fighting like yourself. I'd started to wonder if you were another clone." Zero had trained X, and there was no one who knew the holes in someone's fighting style then the person who had spent months, no, years, trying to fix them. "So, since it didn't have your personality or memories, either way, I knew that the virus was only controlling your body, at most."

That Zero was either elsewhere or still in there to wake up.

"I was… asleep. And then someone woke me up. He said he was my older brother, but that doesn't make any sense, because he called Sigma… Oh. Sigma's dead. No, not the virus' Sigma, that was a copy. Sigma-Sigma, the one you built. He, well, I guess he died when he captured me. The virus was stronger then," he could see now, how it had gradually adapted, mutated to become weaker to deal with reploid differences from the androids it had been designed for. "There wasn't enough room, for what it needed to do? So it kicked him out of his body. He didn't know what had happened any more than _I _did, and at first he thought _he _was the copy, but the fake didn't tell you about the crystal, which was important. And…" No, he shook his head. There was too much to explain it all now, even when he didn't understand it himself.

"Long story?" X sounded sympathetic.

"_I _don't know what just happened. I'm starting to think that maybe he was lying about being my brother and was a Lightbot, despite the whole Cyclops look."

"…Cyclops? One eye? And you said something about Dr. Light's capsules?"

"Is it making sense to you? Because he made none to me, or rather there was this sense that things _should _be making sense and I just couldn't make the connection." Like when a word was on the tip of your tongue, Zero would have said, if he'd ever had that problem. Reploids didn't.

"According to one of the legends," X said slowly, then shook his head. "It sounds like this is going to take awhile to sort out, so we should probably get back to base and sort it out there. Given the circumstances, you should probably disarm first."

"Right." Zero started to remove components from his buster with the same practiced economy of motion possessed by a human soldier trained to strip a rifle for cleaning in the shortest time possible. When he was done, he added, "But I don't know if I can do anything about this." He waved his arm and the virus moved with it. "It wasn't a part of me before, but now it is, and I don't know how to separate. When it's like this, it does things when all I do is think about them, like when I thought that it would help cure the mavericks if I had a sample of your nanites and the next thing I know it's reaching for you."

"Ah." X nodded. "I _thought _that was what you meant. You're using the virus' nanites to think with, and so it's joined to your thought processes?" At Zero's nod, he asked, "Can you partition it off, and confine sentient processes to only the nanites in your body? In the way that humans don't use the neurons in their hands to think with."

"Don't you mean sapient processes?"

"No, sentient. Sapient processes are a _sub-set_ of sentient. There has to be the awareness of an 'I' variable for higher-level cognition to occur." In order for a computer, including the brain, to make plans for what it would do, there had to be a variable for it, and it also had to be aware of the effects external conditions had on said unit. Awareness of the self and making a distinction between it and the rest of the universe, that 'it,' that 'I,' was that variable. "Don't just partition off logical thought, but _awareness_."

"The ability to take in data and realize what it means in the context of the self... Right! That was what I was doing wrong. I was treating all of them as 'self' since the virus was there, and of course that wasn't making any sense." He shook his head. "I have no clue what I'm doing, do I. Alright, so if I actually have to send the order for the virus to do something, like sending an order to a limb to move it, then I could cut off the transmitter function? Is that possible? I… don't think it _is. _That's going to make disarming hard."

"Why don't you let them scan you for now," X waved at the medical units he'd brought along, "and I'll put Alia, Lifesaver and the others on speaker in a minute and see if they have any ideas."

Judging from the way X was looking decidedly _not _frustrated, they had been yelling at him to do so for the past five minutes. "Were they actually listening to any of the lectures about supporting the judgment of the hunter in the field instead of undermining and distracting them?"

X sighed, opening a panel on one of the medical units as the other scanned Zero. "To be fair, the average spotter has more experience than the average field hunter." Due to the fatality rate. "And they do need to keep an eye on them and how reliable they are." In case they went maverick. "Also, they were disregarding your advice on the subject. For obvious reasons." They'd suspected for awhile, it seemed.

"You knew?" That they suspected Zero was a maverick?

"Yes, of course I knew. I knew after the second war. What happened during the third just confirmed it."

"What?" Zero bet that he wasn't the only one who'd reacted like that.

"Well, not the details, and it's clear that you have a lot to tell me, but Dr. Cain and I decided that the best thing was to make sure your systems weren't spreading the virus and just keep an eye on you. Obviously we couldn't tell anyone else, because the instant they went maverick Sigma would have known we knew, and you know what you were like after you were brought in. If we'd told you then you might have done something drastic, and friendship aside, we needed you. You were always our best chance of finding a way to stop the virus, and what would have happened if I'd died and there were no other immune reploids?" X frowned and removed something from the unit. "I knew that weld was too recent. Lifesaver? Either you needed to do a _much _better job of checking your staff for mavericks or you and I are going to have words when I get back."

X carefully put the detonator that had been hooked up to the medical unit's power supply down on the ground. "And that is why we were always so opposed to the idea of hunters being accompanied by drones." He returned to the previous subject as casually as though they hadn't both been in danger of being blown up. "To be honest, because of some of Sigma's remarks, it was obvious that you had some equivalent of Dr. Light's capsules present in the virus, which was likely why they were able to start repairing you and we were able to finish."

"You knew?"

X looked up at him. "How long have you known?"

Zero paused. "Since the end of the fourth war," he confessed, "Although I should have put it together earlier."

"You just didn't want to contemplate something like that." X nodded. He understood, really. "Have you really been able to return mavericks to themselves? It would hopefully calm them down if you cured the ones in HQ, at least."

Zero frowned, trying to use the virus to examine the other medical unit without X noticing. Except why should he try to hide it? It would only be more suspicious, really, that he was trying to use the virus in secret. "Hunters… They're the ones that were most likely to try to self-destruct out of guilt. I have to at least… keep in contact to be able to hold a backup in case they try it. I was focusing on the hunters first, of course." X was right that it was the obvious tactical choice. "Most of them are back to normal, but there's still edited virus in their systems. Some of them I'm having to basically sedate so they don't start going insane from guilt, and a few I'm almost certain won't try anything but I nearly lost a few already." There had sometimes been only a split second in which to cancel withdrawing the virus and link them in before it was too late to save them. "I can cure-cure people, though, I just don't think it's a good idea until you or someone figures out a way to do backups that doesn't require the virus."

X didn't want to ask this, but he had to. "Were any of them in the command staff?"

"No, thank goodness."

"That's a relief." X destroyed the detonator with a calculated blast. "I was really beginning to worry about Lifesaver. Of course, the fact that he _was _worrying me so badly was why I was almost certain he wasn't a maverick. They have the sense to hide that they're trying to undermine the hunters, while Lifesaver was very open and unapologetic about how his measures were damaging our, and especially your, ability to fight. On the other hand, he could have been smart enough to be taking refuge in audacity."

"You really have changed," Zero said after a moment, almost sadly. What had happened to his sweet little rookie, who almost refused to learn to be paranoid, about the dirty tricks people could pull, because he was so determined that soon this would be fixed and all that would become utterly irrelevant once again?

"Someone has to think about these things. Dr. Cain used to play devil's advocate, but once he was no longer always thinking clearly he might have let something slip, and Signas… We built him to be as resistant as we could, but he was still not just vulnerable but…" too young. X shrugged apologetically. "And I'm sorry for talking about all of you like you weren't listening. Hopefully reports of mavericks returning to normal should have come in already to corroborate what Zero has said, and he's demonstrated control over the virus. I _am _sorry for shutting down communications temporarily, and for keeping the receiver jammed even after I started transmitting again, but you might have distracted me and made me miss something important."

Zero could imagine Alia starting to say she might have noticed something he didn't, and then hopefully having the sense to swallow her words. Her trying to spot for X was, well, absolutely nothing but a distraction for him. X put up with her chatter about things he already knew because he could use the distraction, wanted to hear a friendly voice on the battlefield, not because she was useful.

When Zero dressed someone down the way X was now, his voice got low and dangerous. Drill sergeants yelled, trying to make the rookie too terrified to ever mess up that badly again. X sounded understanding, almost like he was making excuses for them and preemptively accepting their apology and promise to try not to do it again. Like he was disappointed, but knew they could do better.

It wasn't a mom voice, reploids didn't have mothers, but it still made people want the earth to swallow them up to hide how ashamed they felt, and it would have made rookies give X puppy dog eyes if they'd known how to (that they were young and didn't know any better and were really sorry).

They'd _really _prefer he just yelled.

"I'm fine," X continued, "and I'm sorry for worrying you." That was more giving them the benefit of the doubt, that if they'd done something stupid it would have only been because they were worried. "As you can see," hopefully, "Zero isn't going to hurt me, and it would be a grave mistake to try to kill someone who can remove the threat of the virus." So they should know better than to tell X to kill him or to try to manage it themselves. "I hope you've got some plan to make sure that no one tries anything: there were a few attempts to permanently damage him when he was brought in the first time," and X didn't blame them, but he didn't want to have to deal with that again. "Zero, is there anything you want to say before I let them talk?"

"I'm sorry for worrying them too, and I wish I could have done something about this sooner, it just… wasn't even possible," he realized. "Not with the seals there."

"Alright." X switched it on.

"-issleswerelaunchedatyourcurrenlocation," Alia's voice came out in a rush as they heard frantic chatter in the background.

X facepalmed, a gesture he'd picked up from Dr. Cain, who had done it when trying to fight off a headache.

Zero swore, grabbed X, and got them through both the virus' teleport shield and headquarters' to the command center. "Whose bright idea was that?! As though there wasn't already enough atmospheric virus! Wasn't it obvious that Sigma was practically daring you to do it, just like his first body in this war _and _Eurasia?!"

X shook his head slowly, still holding his hand to it. "It doesn't matter whose _fault _it was. All of you were _responsible_ for what happened." In order to prevent a single maverick launching missiles, the keys of four out of the six senior command staff were required. "I am very, very disappointed in all of you. You should all know better by now." Well, Lifesaver was new, but the others didn't have that excuse. "Will they do any damage?"

Zero's expression was bleak. "No." Because all the humans that had lived there were already dead, and all the reploids had already gone maverick. "I've gotten them out of there. It's not like there's anything left to destroy." The colony had already dropped, the place was already nothing but a pile of wreckage marking a mass grave.

"That's a relief." X gathered himself, removed his hand, and looked around the room. Under his breath, he remarked to Zero, "You see why I couldn't take a leave of absence to work on a cure."

"Same here," was Zero's quiet reply, as he brushed past X.

X took a deliberate breath, then tugged on Zero's arm for him to stay put and let X handle this. In the same instant Zero felt him destroy the nanites he didn't even remember putting in X's systems (but he would have had to, in order to teleport him). It wasn't so much the destruction as the realization of what he had done that made him freeze.

"That didn't hurt, did it?" X asked, seeing his reaction.

Zero shook his head, frowning. Sure, it had been necessary at the time, and he couldn't fault his reflex to save X, but why this nebulous feeling of discontent? He hadn't even been really sensing the nanites in X, between the partition and how distracted he'd been. It was as though he hadn't tried to do it before to get a sample, or done it this time to save him, but like he _wanted _to infect X.

Then he realized that yes, that pretty much summed it up. He did want to infect X. It was somehow _annoying_ that he couldn't just reach out and take him in, fold him up, safe and warm and strong, in the peace that X had always wanted. He'd given him Elysium, or would as soon as this annoying stuff was sorted out, so why couldn't he have him now?

He wanted to, he really wanted to, just push X down on one of the consoles, hold him and flood him until he stopped protesting because people would get the wrong idea and just let Zero have him. It wasn't like he couldn't make them all _see._

Yeah, he had to admit again that 'Jacob' was right. If he hadn't already admitted that he was Omega thoughts like that would be scaring him, since he'd be trying to claim they weren't like him, weren't him, and the next thing he knew they _wouldn't _be him. There wasn't really anything _wrong _with wanting to protect X, he just had to not to anything against his, or anyone else's, wishes. Provided they were in their right mind. "Sorry about that," he apologized, frowning. "It was… reflex. I had to grab you to pull you out of there, and even with the division, it was still like using my hands."

"I'm not complaining," X murmured, looking at the tracking screen. "Did I miss anything?"

"No." Very much not. "You got all of them. How was the old virus even able to make you dizzy? I wasn't _getting _anything from them, other than the fact you were standing there, which I knew anyway so I didn't notice anything odd, and then they're obliterated."

"Saturation," X explained. "When I was only exposed to small doses, I didn't even notice infection – they were just treated like faulty nanites. However, when virus was shielded by the debris from more virus, then it took a few seconds to break it all apart."

"Hmm. I don't _like _technical stuff." Zero examined his hands. "Well, I supposed I'm interested in beam saber design and other practical things, but I want to know how you did that." To pick it apart and figure out how to copy it.

"Well, it's not as though everyone else doesn't wish we could copy my design better. And my immunity." X's eyes scanned the room, counting the empty consoles. "Were they secured or destroyed?"

"Secured," Zero and Signas answered at the same time.

"That's good." No more deaths, even if Zero had said he had, "Backup technology? The same kind robot masters had? I thought that was impossible, since we're nanite hybrids. Just transmitting the programs wouldn't accomplish anything."

"Teleportation," Zero reminded him. "Optimally, the whole central processor is teleported out before it gets seriously damaged, but a sample is enough. If they're custom built, though, it's already inaccessible and can't be hit with normal weaponry." In that other dimension, Zero suddenly knew. He was, and the fake Sigma had been just piloting bodies, they hadn't been _in _them. No wonder blowing up the fake Sigma hadn't accomplished anything.

But death and degradation were two different things. "I can't cure several of the first generation unless you have copies of the nanite samples you used for them. It's been too long, they won't be able to reconfigure themselves unless they have _something _familiar to work with."

"That depends." X frowned. "The lab has been moved so many times… Can you destroy the missiles before they hit?" They would make it hard to salvage anything from the ruin.

Zero shook his head. "I got rid of the atmospheric virus already. I have teleport capability, but I don't have any way to figure out the coordinates in order to put virus there, and… Oh boy." He was just not used to this at all. "I had the nanites self-destruct. There's going to be metal dust falling everywhere. I should have had them gather somewhere first."

That wasn't good, but X just sighed. "It's alright, at this point we have a lot of practice at cleaning up environmental damage." This wasn't that serious next to what Eurasia had already done, not to mention the Cataclysm. "I'm sure everyone's happier that you destroyed it as soon as you could, really. Now that it's gone, hopefully humans will be able to go outside safely sooner."

"They should." Zero tried not to twitch, or act twitchy. If he started to move towards combat readiness people might get itchy buster arms. "I don't have memories of how this works, just sort of general documentation."

"Were there memories?" Zero had said that he was 'someone else once.' X knew that reploids and androids didn't work like that. Although perhaps Zero wasn't an android, in the same way reploids weren't robot masters?

"They're still sealed. My weaponry, defense capabilities, and virus control were all sealed. I couldn't access them until now."

"Why not?" Alia finally dared to speak up.

Lifesaver was having the grace to stay out of the way and be quiet. What X had said appeared to have hit home.

"They were being sealed. Sigma… He died. When he rescued me. The virus killed him, and he went to backup. The virus didn't infect him when it killed him because it was using his systems to configure, meaning it didn't have the ability to actually change people's personalities yet, and the backup system assumed that since he was being sent to it, he must already have been altered. He didn't have any idea what the hell had just happened. At first he thought he was a copy, trapped looking out through someone else's eyes, and then he realized that there was someone else walking around in _his_ body. Someone who was lying to X: he wondered if he was the fake, and… God, that must have been terrifying." He gripped the railing, shoulders hunching in, determinedly not shuddering. "My weapons and defense systems were just damaged, and I couldn't unlock them. I wonder if he was the one who damaged them, actually? That would explain why they had to be unlocked by someone that wasn't me."

"To keep you from infecting everyone else?" Alia would have looked pale, if she were a human.

X thought of all the times Zero's self-destruct had nearly triggered while they were trying to repair him, but remained silent. He'd _known _some of them were sabotage, but been unable to find the culprit.

"I wonder if he saw my memories, and that was how he found out about… But 'Jacob' was sealing my memories, and if he was awake all along then why did he _let that happen_? Unless he couldn't do anything about the virus. Maybe, it is nanites after all. So he had to wait until either I was strong enough to resist the virus and take control, or the worst happened and there wasn't any more time. I suppose." That made sense, that was fair, but… He threw up an arm and started to pace, boots clicking on the floor, hair swishing, so that his body had something to do to match the frantic pace of his mind and the virus.

"Jacob?" Alia asked.

"Zero's equivalent of the AI in Dr. Light's capsules. Possibly. Why are you calling him Jacob?"

"Jacob Marley. 'You will be visited by three spirits.' Sigma was one of them. He died, again, they all did. Sigma had turned himself into the seal on the virus, and even if it had been possible to break that seal without breaking _him, _he didn't want that. He was brave, X. He was the man I thought he was. You should be proud, but he couldn't stand the thought of that door opening while he was alive. Not again." He knew that X's eyes had closed even though he wasn't looking at him, and at first he worried that he'd infected him again, but it was just sort-of-sonar.

He couldn't look at X. "Jacob said that I'd been trying to save the people who died near me even when they weren't maverick, send them to backup, so there has to be a way to create backups without infecting people, unless a virus has to be nearby. I only met three, and I think there were only four, counting Jacob. Four left. The others had already… faded away. All this time, and I didn't know. They were burning themselves out so I could stay sane, and I didn't know." He had to make peace, for their sakes. He had to make it _worth it. _

"It's possible that your brother was Protoman. Or based on him, at least. That would explain why he called Sigma 'nephew.'" X and Zero both knew that X had said that now in order to distract Zero from his guilt.

"Zero's… but why would Dr. Light create anything like the virus?"

There was Alia, saying the obvious-yet-useless yet again. "Zero wasn't created by Dr. Light," X told her. "That was obvious from the beginning. Engineers and programmers have distinct styles. Zero's systems have very little resemblance to mine beyond the superficial." He was based on X's plans, roughly, but interpreted and altered by someone completely different who had seen them only as guidelines. "Frankly, I'm not certain if Zero would technically be considered a reploid." Not that X was technically a reploid: he was the _andr_oid that the _repl_oids were _repl_ications of. "In some ways, he's as distinct from us as a robot master would theoretically be. The relationship to the virus seems to confirm that."

"He _is _the virus?" Signas would be shuddering if he weren't designed to be able to hide his emotions: a necessary skill in a commander.

"No, the electrical patterns and programs in his chips are involved in his thought process: he's not a nanite-only intelligence in the way robot masters were chip-only. In order to explain, I'd have to get technical, but if a backup for a reploid, or Zero, consists of nanites and an electrical pattern he's optimized for it. Perhaps nanite-energy hybrid might be a good way to put it."

"A walking ghost?" That was almost funny, and right now almost was good enough.

"Theoretically, nanite-only intelligences are possible. Energy-only might be as well. But Zero is Zero." X was sure of it, and of him, and that was what mattered.

"Zero Omega."

"Zero." Not now. X's voice was even, but that was a warning. This was not the time to bring this up.

"Did you know that too?" All along? "Sigma was afraid that the instant I woke up I was going to kill you. He was trying to influence me, since that was the only way he could affect the outside world. Try to keep me under control and make sure that you were well trained."

"I wondered, sometimes, if you had copied some of his traits the way the virus did." It had ached, sometimes, to see his first child's traits in his best friend. Especially after every war, every time seeing the mockery the virus had made of them. To see the hero Sigma had once been reminded him of the general's bravery and compassion, reminded him that all the mavericks were innocent people, innocent children. "You helped keep me from falling into hatred."

"You're not surprised that I was supposed to kill you. You knew, almost all along, about the virus and about… Did you know? Were you lying to me when you said you trusted me?" How could X trust Dr. Wily's creation?

"I wasn't lying to you." It had been necessary to skirt around the truth sometimes, but trust was an important thing.

"Why not? I was lying to you, when I said… and I didn't even know it. Why not?" He shook his head slowly, long blond hair swishing, back still turned to all of them. "Because you're you. And that's why I have to give you your Elysium. Not Iris'. Definitely not _his._"

"It's difficult. To be the eldest, the first of a new race. To be_ responsible_ for all your children, however warped they may become. You want to believe it's because you failed somewhere, that it's your fault, when something terrible happens, because if the problem was with you, then you could fix it. There are so many things that are out of our control, that we could have, can and will be able to do nothing about. Should I blame myself for every crime of every maverick? After all, if I'd been able to figure out immunity… You can't blame yourself for the Mavericks, either."

"I don't remember, but I'm absolutely certain that the Mavericks aren't the worst of it." Sigma had punched him in the head when he had been busted in the head, insane and on autopilot. "Jacob said that he was there because I'd killed him. Just like Sigma, Colonel, and Iris."

"Iris?"

"Dead and gone, now. She sacrificed herself, just like the other two. I have to make it worth it."

"Then promise me that you won't do anything drastic."

"Not until I know what will happen when I die. The virus might even just find a new host, create one from some template."

"So I was right that there was a copy of your plans in there." That would be how the mavericks had been able to get so far in his repairs before X got there.

"Thinking of making more like me? Are you serious?"

"Zero, do you really want the virus to run wild again? What if something happens to you? Not to mention that you aren't evil, and why shouldn't we be able to coexist?" Like reploids and humans should. Would, in the world X had worked to build and protect all this time.

"I'm not even sure I can die. I am a walking ghost, after all." It made him clench his fists. "You say things like that, and I want to believe in them. I want to protect you, to let you show me that world, because you're the only one who could possibly make it possible. I'll make it real, for you, for everyone, but it's because of you that I can believe that it's possible. A world where reploids and humans, where everyone lives in peace. That's why." That had been all of why, in the end. What did he know about right and wrong? He could only trust in the judgment of the people he believed in. Fight for them. "That's all of why."


End file.
